Len Lye: Atomic Power
20 Aug 2022 - 25 Apr 2023
Len Lye as political thinker: beyond riotous experimental films to a world at war. In the 1940s Lye’s politics placed the artist amongst a group of figures concerned with questions of freedom, peace and the idea of global community. Atomic Power tells that story.
Invited to the United States during the latter stages of World War II by US politician and peace envoy Wendell Willkie in order to develop his own anti-fascist manifesto, ‘A Definition of a Common Purpose’, Len Lye’s politics placed the artist amongst a group of figures concerned with questions of freedom, peace and the idea of global community.
The paradox of victory and peace won with the assistance of the atomic bomb concurred with Lye’s challenge in his manifesto – to be firm in defining what values had been won at such cost.
Len Lye, Atomic Dance, 1960. Collection Len Lye Foundation